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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy reading, November 3, 2003
This book is a massive summary, comparison of, and commentary on oriental mythology. It is divided into 3 major parts: Western Oriental mythology, Indian mythology, and the mythologies of the Far East. Campbell's incredible scholarship is very impressive, and rather overwhelming at times. He obviously had a great familiarity with the mythologies and religions of practically all areas of the planet. However, his explanations for general readers of foreign mythologies weren't always clear, as evidenced in this book. Much of this book focuses on developing the idea that Oriental mythologies had one major origin, in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. According to Campbell, traces of the religion and mythologies of the Pharaohs, as well as implements of their material culture, could subsequently be found in every major culture heading eastward, from Persia to India, from China to Japan. This idea is not exactly clear in the beginning of the work, and the initial chapters about the Pharaohs start with a jerk, leaving some readers wondering "Why start here, so far west?" The idea is stated more and more explicitly as the book progresses, so that by the time we reach the Chinese section, Campbell writes about the "primacy of the West-to-East cultural flow". Later in the same section, Campbell writes "the question of the impact of sentiments and ideas carried from one domain to another, which is basic to our study, is ...well illustrated by the annals of the settlement of Buddhism in China..." Is there really enough evidence to support the idea of a single common mythology that spread from West to East? Is this theory accepted by modern specialists in mythology? A reader who comes to this book independently of a class or other mythology background can only speculate on these questions. Campbell does a masterful job of laying out similarities across cultures, such as his description of the "archetypal Savior Biography", where he lists the following elements (among others):
--scion of a royal line
--miraculously born
--amid supernatural phenomena
--of whom an aged holy man prophesies a world-saving message
--whose childhood deeds proclaim his divine character
--engages in arduous forest disciplines
--which confront him with a supernatural adversary
He points out that this list applies to the Jains, Buddhists, as well as Christians, and, if I read him correctly, presents it as one piece of evidence for linkage between Western and Oriental mythologies. The lucidity of Campbell's descriptions and summaries of myths vary. Sometimes he quotes stories or myths at great length. But other times, he passes over the details quickly with such statements as "We need not rehearse the legends of his miraculous birth..." in his haste to get to commentary about the stories in question. For newcomers to the topic, this can be somewhat of a disappointment, since the commentaries are difficult to understand if one is not already familiar with the stories, and it is to learn about the stories themselves that some readers pick up this book. The book itself seems to have developed from Campbell's notes. Thus, there is considerable explicit enumeration of points, as well as the occasional sentence fragment. This style of writing requires very active study from a reader who is determined to wrestle the kernel of meaning from Campbell's words. The one disappointing chapter was the chapter on Tibet, which actually includes only a few paragraphs about the mythology of Tibet. The remainder of the chapter is a brief collection of ideas from Maoist communism, juxtaposed with stories of atrocities during the Chinese takeover of Tibet. While the story of Tibet is indeed extremely lamentable, perhaps these details would better fit in a political description of Tibet in order to make more room for an overview of Tibetan mythology.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven but fascinating commentary, June 1, 2006
"Oriental Mythology" is the second in the "Masks of God" series, the follow up to "Primitive Mythology". It covers more of the mind boggling extent of humankind's mythic past, material that is the basis for religion and philosophy. Campbell presents all sorts of details from artifacts dug up by archeologists and some rather long-winded quoted passages. Much of it is rather uneven and challenging to follow, but the payoff is usually Campbell's own commentary which often uses a soaring language to elucidate, to associate and connect different myths of different cultures.
The especially fascinating part of the book for me concerns the mystery of how yoga philosophy and practice came into being and evolved as it did to different forms such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Yoga philosophy defines a very different state of being than the Abrahamic tradition of the West. It does not situate humankind in a state of sin and guilt, stranded in a corrupt world, alienated from a transcendent God; but rather, in a state of ignorance with knowledge as the key to escaping from inevitable suffering caused by the delusion of living in a material world. The ancient civilization in the Indus Valley contains seeds of it's development, but it is far from clear just how it developed and what role the Aryans, who invaded and plundered India, played. In any event, Campbell concludes "tentatively" that yoga is "indigenous" to India.
The many different forms and manifestations of Buddhism follow from the ancient yoga tradition of asceticism. The book is not an good introduction to Buddhism, and it can be difficult to distinguish between the many sects and their different metaphysics and practices. It's influence burgeoned and then waned in India, but spread throughout the Far East, and combined with the Native nature religions of Tao in China and Shinto in Japan. Though Buddhism in whatever form mainly involves a turning away from the affairs of the world, from what is shown here, it has hardly ever failed to provide a civilizing influence.
I have to echo some of the criticisms of other reviewers. The inclusion of a chapter on ancient Egypt and also a section on the hieratic city states of Mesopotamia do not go the way of clarifying how Oriental myth grew as it did. The organization of the book would have been a lot more straightforward if he had gone directly from the introduction, in which Campbell compares East with West, to ancient India and directly to the mysteries of the Orient. He seeks to trace the influence of Egypt and Mesopotamia to the East, but the influences are so scattered and so relative, that it would have been better to have stuck with India, China, and Japan. Also, the final section on Tibet, although illuminating, departs in large measure from the subject matter.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Orient, February 17, 2002
In this book Campbell has covered the entire field
from Ancient Egypt via pre-Buddhist, Buddhist & post-Buddhist
India to China, Japan & Tibet. Apart from a multitude of references, citations and amusing
legends illustrating his nominal concern (Mythologies)-the
center of this book (a part of "The Masks of God" tetralogy)
lies elsewhere. Essentailly, all Campbell's work (and "Oriental
Mythology", with its chapter 1 "Signatures of the four great
domains", is a particularly good example) is a predominantly
Jungian (with a few Freudian insights assimilated) comparative
analysis of the dominant traditional mindsets. For instance, he sharply differentiates between two
"Western" archetypes (Jung again) & "loyalties": 1.Promethean hero-the Greco-Roman legacy
of ever-expanding and conquering being
2.Job-the Levantine legacy transmuted into Christianity Or, "Eastern" loyalties of: 3.Yogi- ascetic absorbed in transcosmic cataleptic trance, as the "trademark" of India
4.Sage-essentially the Chinese ideal of harmony ("flowing" with Tao, or realizing
one's tao in society (Confucians)) Be as it may, this is a treasure trove of ideas, associations & insights.
I haven't encountered any richer or profounder work of late.
And, as a ghastly surprise, book ends with factual report on Chinese
communist invasion of Tibet (mutilations, castrations, sterilizations,
public executions & humiliations), as all the horrors from the "Bardo Thodhol"
have descended on our earthly reality. A horrendous reminder that
mythologies are not dead, dated nor irrelevant.
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